We Should Add Additional Project Content to the Homepage

[livestrong2109]

A few of us have been thinking that it would be a good idea to have Project relate information added to the homepage. Things such as:

1. Recent Commits & Bugzilla Progress Summary
2. Drop the Timeline on the roadmap and replace it with a list of goals for the next release
3. Newest Working Apps
4. User Uploadable Screen Shots
5. Public Access to News Letter - Allow users to write articles for submission to the newsletter

We need to find better ways to build community support and create a sense of belonging and family within the RoS Community. None of us is an Island though to many it may feel like it. We need to keep people informed and up to date, additionally we should try and create some type of SDK for working with RoS, something that can get people developing on any platform in a hour or less. I feel that many of those on here would benefit from better information and easier tools.

If anyone has any idea or would just like to comment please join this discussion

[betaluva]

good idea, especially the list of applications and games that work ( at the time of testing ), you shouldn't have to chase around the site to find the compatibility page ( assuming that visitors even know that the page exists )

[Yaraslau]

A few of us have been thinking that it would be a good idea to have Project relate information added to the homepage. Things such as:

1. Recent Commits & Bugzilla Progress Summary
2. Drop the Timeline on the roadmap and replace it with a list of goals for the next release
3. Newest Working Apps
4. User Uploadable Screen Shots
5. Public Access to News Letter - Allow users to write articles for submission to the newsletter
...

1. It's better to use RSS subscription to see development progress.
2. I don't think, that this will be implemented. The goals for the next releases are highlighted, it's enough. Good roadmap requires time and good schedule. Less written words for roadmap -> more coding -> good release. This is more important.
3. good idea, but (just for example) ReactOS still doesn't work on my computer. Newest Working Apps? Maybe, in March or April? Now - useless idea.
4. agree.
5. not agree. Users may share their experiences here, in forum. Suitable for all - users and visitors.

[Lone_Rifle]

RSS subscriptions may not work for everybody. Some people don't want to follow the project that closely.

[vicmarcal]

About all of these points i would add:
-Forum new topics
-A "Most active Forum users"
-A new forum with "Karma" and "Marking Topic as Answered" and "Rating Topics".
-The list of changes of "Mailing lists"

[Yaraslau]

Lone_Rifle,

roadmap is also not so simple for an ordinary user. Imagine, somebody (=an ordinary user) will find this - "ReactOS will support USB". Wow, support, finally!!! Great, unbelievable, unimaginable...etc. But USB support can be limited and ordinary people can't recognize (can't understand) the difference between the full USB support (say, reading, writing, checking clasters, recovering, anything else...) and limited USB support (mouse and keyboard, without flash-drive support).

[Lone_Rifle]

I didn't say anything about roadmaps.

[DangerGround]

Most of this things are already planned.

[Yaraslau]

I didn't say anything about roadmaps.

Lone_Rifle,
I'm sorry, I used "roadmap" for explanation of my thoughts, expressed my opinion.

Most of this things are already planned.

When will these things be implemented?

[DangerGround]

When will these things be implemented?

They will be there when the new homepage is done(No date scheduled, when it's done.)

[Lone_Rifle]

if i was not talking about roadmaps, why did you start talking about it? I'm not interested in roadmaps. I'm responding to your 1st point, that RSS subscriptions are sufficient.

[swight]

Personally I have never used RSS and most of the people I know if I mentioned RSS would tell me "What's RSS?". Another point is where is this RSS feed? Is there anything pointing to it's existence? I have no idea where it is.

[gabrielilardi]

Personally I have never used RSS and most of the people I know if I mentioned RSS would tell me "What's RSS?". Another point is where is this RSS feed? Is there anything pointing to it's existence? I have no idea where it is.

Browse to the development page (left upper-navigation menu) once there, the last item in the menu says "ReactOS CIA". In that page you'll find the rss feed link to the left under "syndicate".

[RaptorEmperor]

Personally I have never used RSS and most of the people I know if I mentioned RSS would tell me "What's RSS?". Another point is where is this RSS feed? Is there anything pointing to it's existence? I have no idea where it is.

Browse to the development page (left upper-navigation menu) once there, the last item in the menu says "ReactOS CIA". In that page you'll find the rss feed link to the left under "syndicate".

I just bookmarked the ReactOS CIA page, since I'm too lazy to teach myself how to use RSS. Most computer users don't know what RSS is, and I don't even know that many power users that use it either. I do think that having source activity on the mainpage looks really well. When I saw it on the Haiku page I thought "We should have that too!"

Users can already submit screenshots in the Compatibility Database. There should be more work on adding images to the screenshots page, but if everyone had access to the screenshots page I'd be scared of it getting cluttered up with redundant images. i think the best way to approach the issue with screenshots is to simply take screenshots from the Compatibility Database.

Overall, I think we should hold our criticisms of the Homepage until it's been updated. No point over arguing which features to add when most of our suggestions are already being planned anyway.

[swight]

Browse to the development page (left upper-navigation menu) once there, the last item in the menu says "ReactOS CIA". In that page you'll find the rss feed link to the left under "syndicate".

No wonder I never found it and I wouldn't expect the average user to find it the first time that way without the trail being provided for them. Let's think about the trail from a user perspective. The very first link is called "Development". Wouldn't a user think "that is for people that plan to code for the project". Next link is called "ReactOS CIA". On this one I can hear the user saying "What is CIA"(assuming they look at the menu at the left instead of just focusing on the main page area like I did at first). The last link makes enough sense and is fine.

The other route I know to the CIA site(now that I know the RSS feed is there) is through the trunk build selector page but to get to it you would have to assume that the user wanted to download a trunk build at least the first time.